PFC Hansen Kirkpatrick and his mom, from her Facebook page.
Somewhere in Wasilla, Alaska, there are a mom and dad whose brave son went off to war in January and will return in a flag-draped casket in July. Tonight, their hearts are broken as they leave Alaska to be present when their son’s remains return to the U.S.
PFC Hansen Kirkpatrick was the seventh U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan this year, in the war against terrorism that seems to never end. U.S. troops have rotated through the war-torn country for the past 15 years and nearly 1,000 Americans and British military personnel have died in this region.
Kirkpatrick was killed late Monday while fighting the Taliban alongside Afghanistan forces in Helmand Province, Pentagon officials said. Helmand is a particularly restive area of Southern Afghanistan.
Kirkpatrick appears to be the first American soldier to die in the province this year. He was hit by indirect mortar attack; typically that involves exploding shells or rocket rounds.
Two other soldiers were injured in the attack during the operation, said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, who said the injuries were not believed to be life-threatening.
Kirkpatrick was with the Fort Bliss-based 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. He was a mortarman who joined in June, 2016, according to Army Maj. James C. Bithorn, an officer with the 1st Armored Division’s 1st Brigade. He described Kirkpatrick as “a caring, disciplined, and intelligent young soldier.”
One person he served with wrote on Facebook that Kirkpatrick was a great storyteller who used to regale his fellow soldiers with tales from Alaska. Kirkpatrick had attended a high school named for a master storyteller: Robert Service High School in Anchorage.
After graduation, Kirkpatrick enlisted, and he and 1,500 other soldiers deployed to Afghanistan in January to serve in nine-month rotations. The brigade’s soldiers embed in various regions, some working alongside U.S. Marines and Afghan forces fighting the Taliban and its most strident wing, ISIS, or the Islamic State.
The area has seen heavy fighting in recent weeks as Taliban forces have pushed for control of an area of intense opium poppy production, which is a major source of funding for the Taliban and is a primary supply of opium for the global trade.
“We will keep [Kirkpatrick’s] family in our thoughts and prayers as we reflect on the sacrifice he and others have made to secure our freedoms and help make Afghanistan a better place,” Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in a prepared statement.
For the parents and siblings of PFC Hansen Kirkpatrick, the Fourth of July will not be the same next year or the years that follow. This family became a Gold Star family on July 3, 2017, a sad designation, a somber honor that reminds us of their sacrifice for our nation.
Our hearts go out to the family, friends, and fellow soldiers of PFC Hansen Kirkpatrick.
A COUP TO REMEMBER: The last time the Alaska Legislature stayed in session this long was back in the 1980s, when Rep. Jim Duncan, a Juneau Democrat, was House Speaker. The session went into June.
Old-timers will remember what happened next. The session went too long, so there on June 12, 1981 some legislators staged a coup, and Duncan was out as speaker, replaced by Joe Hayes.
The coup was staged by Reps. Russ Meekins, Rick Halford, Mitchell Abood, Al Adams, Charles Anderson, Ramona Barnes, Betty Cato, Jack Fuller, Michael Beirne, Robert Bettisworth, Bernard Bylsma, David Cuddy, Kenneth Fanning, E. J. Haugen, Joe Hayes, Vernon Hurlbert, Terry Martin, Ray Metcalfe, Joe Montgomery, Patrick O’Connell, Randy Phillips, and Richard Randolph.
Part of the ousted Duncan camp were Reps. Hugh Malone, Brian Rogers, Fred Brown, Don Clocksin, Sam Cotten (now Fish and Game commissioner), Sally Smith, Mike Miller, Tony Vaska and Fred Zharoff. They sued to have Duncan restored, saying the coup was unconstitutional. Their attorney was Doug Pope. They lost.
The Anchorage Superior Court ruled that while “the procedures used by the majority in accomplishing its will lacked woefully in decorum and the orderly parliamentary process by which the business of a public legislative body should be conducted,” the replacement of Speaker Duncan was lawful. The group also lost on appeal.
As for Duncan, he is the only House Speaker to last but one session, but he is still walking the halls of the Capitol, now as the union representative for State employees (some might suggest that he held that position back then, too).
Thirty six years since the first coup in the House, the Democrats once again are in control and have lost track of time. They are holding the Legislature in session well into July, almost as though this is the best-paying job they’ll ever have.
IF YOU HAVE TO ASK, YOU CAN’T AFFORD IT: To answer all those questions we’re getting about where the founder of Facebook stays when he comes to Alaska, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla parked at the Alaska Wilderness Lodge in China Poot Bay in Kachemak Bay, dined at local Homer restaurants, and did not use a guide for fishing, just the lodge staff and equipment.
BEST WILLIAM SEWARD STATUE EVER: The bronze statue of William Seward was dedicated on July 3 in Juneau. It sits in the spot close to where the old much-maligned Nimbus once stood, the most controversial public sculpture in Alaska. By all accounts the dedication ceremony was rainy but the depiction of Secretary of State Seward is being praised for its artistry and its “scars and all” honesty.
APOCALYPSE ISLAND: Juneau Empire reporter James Brooks snapped a photo from the island near the whale sculpture in Juneau, and we think those are fireworks, even though his photo was taken not long after North Korea launched its long-range missile:
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Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, fillets a salmon in Homer, Alaska. (Photo from his Facebook page.)
WE WADE INTO FACEBOOK FOUNDER’S ‘BASIC INCOME’ CLAIMS
Alaska, the richest state to ever go broke, may not have any money to promote tourism these days, what with our budget crisis and all.
But with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the state over the weekend, that may be all the promotion our state can stand. Except he’s sending us the wrong type of people to our state — people who want free money.
Zuckerberg, in his exploratory essay about the Alaska Permanent Fund, may be sending Alaska the kind of person who thinks that our “basic income” is the social safety net.
Zuckerberg spent time in Homer, kayaking, fishing, and observing dip netters gather salmon for their freezers.
He visited Seward for the Fourth of July and watched runners muddy and bloody themselves on Mount Marathon.
And he wrote about it on Facebook, where millions of people will read his words and take them to heart.
“One thing that stood out to us is how different Alaska’s social safety net programs are in a way that provides some good lessons for the rest of our country.
“Alaska has a form of basic income called the Permanent Fund Dividend. Every year, a portion of the oil revenue the state makes is put into a fund. Rather than having the government spend that money, it is returned to Alaskan residents through a yearly dividend that is normally $1000 or more per person. That can be especially meaningful if your family has five or six people.
“This is a novel approach to basic income in a few ways. First, it’s funded by natural resources rather than raising taxes. Second, it comes from conservative principles of smaller government, rather than progressive principles of a larger safety net. This shows basic income is a bipartisan idea.
“Seeing how Alaska put this dividend in place reminded me of a lesson I learned early at Facebook: organizations think profoundly differently when they’re profitable than when they’re in debt. When you’re losing money, your mentality is largely about survival. But when you’re profitable, you’re confident about your future and you look for opportunities to invest and grow further. Alaska’s economy has historically created this winning mentality, which has led to this basic income. That may be a lesson for the rest of the country as well.”
Basic income is a cause that Zuckerberg has adopted as his own, speaking about it at length at his recent speech at Harvard University. This resonates with a certain subset of people. He’s calling it a bipartisan idea that everyone can get behind.
However, it is not an idea everyone embraces. Conservatives and free-market types have issues with the basic-income movement that Zuckerberg is championing.
America already does have a type of basic income program: Entitlements. The government, through taxation, pays for people’s housing, food, medical care, phone service. Taxpayers pay for elder care, disabled care, special needs care, day care. Taxpayers pay for abortions and fertility treatments. Taxpayers pay for sex change operations and tattoo removal. We pay for fresh needles so addicts can stay “healthy.” We shoulder the cost for opioid and heroin overdose prevention.
We even have an earned income tax credit, which means instead of paying taxes, the government gives you money.
The average taxpayer in America pays for government handsomely. In 2016, federal, state and local governments collected $4.9 trillion in taxes, which is:
$15,202 for each person living in the U.S.
$39,074 for each household in the U.S.
26.5% of the U.S. economy
And yet, we are a nation with $20 trillion in national debt.
Only in a country sliding toward socialism would the government take $15,202 per year from one hand and at the same time give every person a basic income in the other hand and keep running up the credit cards.
Zuckerberg doesn’t explore how such a program as the Alaska Permanent Fund would work in the rest of America. Every state doesn’t have a Trans Alaska Pipeline to tap into in order to create a large sovereign wealth fund to support state government needs and annual cash payments to residents.
How would other states raise that kind of cash? And is Alaska’s dividend program really the model for the rest of the country?
In fact, the average $1,022 dividend that Alaskans have received since 1982 barely pays for the increased cost of fuel, food, and housing in our high-cost part of the world. But millions of people who hang on Zuckerberg’s every word don’t know that. And at least a few of them are packing their cars today, and painting “Alaska or bust!” on their back windows.
A word to the wise: Alaska has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. So $1,000 is not a safety net. It’s a plane ticket out of a land that is, in fact, very unforgiving.
Women carry signs insisting on impeachment of Donald Trump just a day after his inauguration in January, 2017.
The response to the president’s Election Integrity Commission’s request for voter information from the states ranged from muted to over-wrought.
Let’s step back and examine what was requested: It was voter data.
Voter data that is widely available.
In fact, both Democrat and Republican parties, which are private organizations, have highly sophisticated programs that have tracked voters and their habits for years. Most voters have no idea how much data has been collected about them by the two main parties.
Democrats use NGP Voter Activation Network, giving Democratic candidates extremely detailed information about all voters. VAN has been called the Democrats’ secret weapon, constructed in partnership with Obama for America. There may not be social security numbers in their data fields, but everything else is fair game.
VAN allows the Democratic National Committee to continuously update information on voters and their voting habits, purchasing, memberships, and other consumer and issue preferences. This data is made available to all Democrat candidates who want it, and they can use it with great effect to microtarget people with ads. If you haven’t gotten a targeted ad from the Democrats, it’s likely because they know you are conservative and they don’t bother.
Republicans have been playing catch-up for years, probably because of a Republican aversion to the invasion of privacy. But now, it’s the only way to win. The Republicans use I-360 or GOPDataCenter, similar to the systems Democrats use. Data-mining is the name of the game.
The vice chair of the president’s Commission on Election Integrity sent a letter last week to all states requesting publicly available information from their voter rolls. Key words: Publicly available. Campaigns request this all the time.
You can get all the Alaska voter information, too, by requesting a disc from the Division of Elections. It will cost you $21.
Here’s the exact request from the commission: “…publicly-available voter roll data including, if publicly available under the laws of your state, the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, [and] voter history from 2006 onward.”
Alaska will give the commission the information that is publicly available.
Later, Alaska might have some explaining to do after the 2016 primary election, where in at least two locales, voters were allowed to vote two ballots — one Republican ballot and one “everything else” ballot. We’ve got info on that — Vice President Pence only need ask us for it. We’ll gladly share it.
FAST FACT ON CALIFORNIA VOTING: In 2016, nearly half of the 2.4 million provisional ballots (questioned ballots) were cast in California, one of the “resist” states. These are ballots where the identify of the voter was in question or they could not be found on the voter rolls of the district they voted in. Just sayin’.
FAST FACT ON RHODE ISLAND VOTING: Fully 20 percent of registered voters in Rhode Island don’t even live in the state, the Secretary of State’s audit found.
TUCK FOR BUSINESS MANAGER! Chris Tuck, Alaska House representative for District 23, has been running for office nearly all session. He has been a candidate for Business Manager of IBEW Local 1547. It’s a job that pays a lot more than he makes as a union representative and more than he makes as a state legislator.
Tuck made it as far as the runoff and now the union members have until July 10 to get their ballots in. Many in the Alaska House like Tuck because he is a nice guy, and they hope he wins his job. But he has weaseled out of some important votes this spring.
As one of the most vocal opponents of REAL ID in the Legislature, he ducked the vote, took an excused absence, and then returned the next morning. When asked by a reporter why he was absent, he sheepishly deflected the question.
Tuck is majority leader in the House. Did he succumb to union pressure? Will he leave his job in the Legislature if he wins his IBEW job? Has he been campaigning for his union job when he should have been working on bringing the House and Senate together?
We enjoyed the inside of Tuck’s campaign brochure, which has all the makings of a graphic novel:
GOVERNOR BIRCH? Rep. Chris Birch says he is not particularly interested in being governor, but he is deeply appreciative of people approaching him and asking him to run. “But I really want to represent people of District 26 right now.”
When you ask people on the street, most seem to agree about what kind of town we want Juneau to be:
Win Gruening
A town with a healthy growing economy, good schools, affordable housing, low taxes, decent medical care, and vibrant arts and culture top the list. Most also want an opportunity to participate in outdoor activities and enjoy the natural beauty around us.
Where we often differ is how we achieve that quality of life and how we should pay for it. Our local Assembly is at the forefront of this debate.
In fact, almost every decision they make requires our elected leaders to balance competing community wants and needs against the limited amount of funds available to satisfy them. It is not an easy task and often puts them in the unenviable position of having to say “no.”
The City and Borough of Juneau Assembly’s job was much easier in July 2008 when oil was selling for over $144 per barrel and State revenue sharing and capital budgets kept our economy humming. Since then, the price of Alaska oil has plummeted to $46 and production has fallen 22 percent — requiring all of us to tighten our belts.
Up to now, Juneau has avoided any significant effects of major budget reductions at the state and federal level. But with state aid reduced, our population stagnant and our schools experiencing lower enrollment, a reality check is in order.
How do we prepare for this? The last thing we should do when times get tough is raise taxes. Every tax dollar we spend should be maximized and only used for borough-wide needs. That means minimizing operating budget increases (indeed, even reducing the operating budget) and only funding necessary capital projects and maintenance of existing capital assets.
One way we can do this is to establish priorities of what will be funded through the renewal of our temporary 1 percent sales tax this October. While called a “temporary” tax and expiring in 2018 if not renewed by voters in the upcoming municipal election, it has become “permanent” in the sense it has continued to fund a variety of capital projects and deferred maintenance over the years.
Last renewed in 2012 for five years, it included money for a new library in the valley, expansion of the Juneau Arts and Culture Center and a snow removal facility at the airport. At that time, with over 24,000 registered voters in Juneau and a 32 percent voter turnout, the sales tax measure passed by just 1,334 votes.
The 1 percent sales tax renewal we will vote on in October is slated to raise almost $44 million over the next five years. Over $125 million in potential requests are being considered.
The Assembly is using evaluation criteria to qualify projects for funding. Projects that would increase operating costs, have alternative funding sources, or are merely grants for operating subsidies will hopefully be ranked lower or disqualified.
Yet, there’s no guarantee a project with only minimal community support won’t get funded. This is because many years ago, the Assembly decided to lump all capital projects and other needs into one single measure to present to voters for approval.
Dubbed somewhat humorously as the “Botelho Bundle” after Bruce Botelho, who was mayor at the time, this “all or nothing” approach allowed projects with less support to be approved with more popular projects that enjoyed wide community support.
While politically clever, the Botelho Bundle method of approving projects doesn’t allow the public to distinguish between projects they want and ones they do not deem worthy.
The decision is left in the hands of city and borough staff and the Assembly to “design” a tax package palatable to voters. While this may work in the “good times”, doesn’t it make sense now to allow voters to participate in setting priorities?
Obviously, it would be impractical and inefficient to have voters weigh in on every single expenditure of sales tax dollars. But establishing guidelines that segregate projects over a certain size would ensure large projects would only be funded if at least 50 percent of the electorate agreed.
One of the inherent fallacies in the current project selection process is that to satisfy more demands, a tax proposal may only provide partial funding for a project. This is very misleading to voters who may think they are approving a complete project only to have it appear again in a subsequent tax package.
Let’s face it, once you begin a project, it becomes difficult to stop funding it. Total costs should be disclosed to voters regardless of the amount requested.
The Assembly should and must continue to evaluate and choose the specific projects presented to voters but placing large projects on a separate list subject to voter approval would assure the Assembly as well as voters that only widely supported projects would get funded.
Win Gruening retired as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in 2012. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is active in community affairs as a 30-plus year member of Juneau Downtown Rotary Club and has been involved in various local and statewide organizations.
OUR SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR HAS A BONE TO PICK WITH ACADEMIA
By ART CHANCE
The Left already owned the “elite” schools by the 1920s and 30s.
When I entered college in a then-small state school in rural Georgia in 1967, the Leftists were there waiting for me.
I could do math and science and make decent grades, because in my circles you didn’t not make decent grades, but I was even in those early days a liberal arts kind of guy. I liked history and literature, and I liked to read and write.
My freshman English professor, in the only time I ever saw him, addressed my class and told us that educated people didn’t think that freshmen in college had anything to say that educated people would be interested in so we would be graded not on what we said, but how we said it; a comma splice or a sentence fragment was an F, and a misspelled word was a letter grade. Papers were written in fountain pen on unlined paper. You could strike through, but you wouldn’t dare. I became a big Hemingway fan and learned to write in simple declarative sentences.
I’m a lot sloppier now and revel in compound complexity that I sometimes get right, but I no longer have to worry about staying in school and keeping my 2-S draft deferment so my little pink ass wasn’t getting shot at in Vietnam.
That was the beginning of the end of the American Academy. In the liberal arts the professors ranged from conventional liberals to outright open communists. They didn’t always push their ideology in class but you knew who you saw at student parties with a joint in their hand and a sophomore girl on their arm.
On that count, “Animal House” is very real; a lot of “Otters” lost their girlfriends to the tweedy English professors. The professors knew that if a guy flunked out, (and you could do that back then), his local draft board would make him 1-A and it was “Good Morning Vietnam.”
If you paid your tuition, showed up from time to time, and weren’t too stoned, you would not fail the class. Between the draft and affirmative action admissions any notion of academic rigor vanished between the late Sixties and early Eighties.
Fast forward 20 or 30 years and outside the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) areas, the university has become a leftist indoctrination camp. In the liberal arts, the “studies” degree programs have been invented to ensure that anybody who showed up occasionally and paid or had someone pay for them would get the precious piece of paper.
After Griggs v. Duke Power, most employers abandoned most employment skills testing and substituted the “a degree” minimum qualification for many, many jobs.
At least “a degree” indicated that you could show up someplace for four or five years. Government is probably the worst, but large corporations aren’t far behind in hiring the semi-literate with no work skills because s/he has “a degree.” The schools have become very good at conferring “a degree,” and charging handsomely for it.
Now we have the crazy world of “safe spaces,” “white privilege” and all the other lefty crap. One cannot voice an opinion on a college campus that isn’t consistent with the Leftist catechism. If you don’t adhere to the catechism, they’d burn you at the stake if they could, and they’re working on being able to.
I really don’t care what they teach at Harvard and the other private universities, though I’ll do my dead level best to discourage any Republican elected or appointed official from ever hiring an Ivy League grad unless s/he’s known the family for four or five generations — and even then I’ll advise to be wary.
Now let’s turn to publicly funded schools and colleges. The world really doesn’t look the way academics have been describing.
A public school teacher or a college instructor or professor is a public employee. This high-status “educator” has no more legal rights than the janitor who cleans his/her classroom. All those vaunted notions of freedom of speech and academic freedom are creatures of statute, policy, or union contract; the government gave them and can take them away. Absent these statutory or policy/contract rights conferred by legislatures or university administrations, the school teacher or college professor has the same rights as the janitor; s/he can do as s/he’s told.
If the school board or board of regents tells the “educators” that they must teach that the Earth is flat and was created 6,000 years ago, the “educator” has a simple choice; teach it, quit, or get fired.
And I’ll admit, arguendo, there might be other constitutional issues with such a policy, but the basic premise holds.
Ironically, the controlling authority on this issue is a Ninth Soviet, excuse me, Circuit decision, Garcetti v. Ceballas. Ceballas was an assistant attorney under Garcetti, of O.J. Simpson trial fame.
Cebellas was disciplined or dismissed by District Attorney Garcetti, and sued alleging violation of his First Amendment right to free speech. The Ninth held that he was speaking as the government and thus was not entitled to First Amendment protection.
The holding is true for any public employee acting in the course of his duties; he speaks as and for the government, not as an individual citizen expressing his own opinion.
The same applies to public school teachers and public college instructors and professors; they speak for the government. The First Amendment protects the students and the public from them, but does not protect them. To the extent that it exists at all, their academic freedom and freedom of speech in their jobs comes from statute, policy, or contract, not from the Constitution.
Republican governors and legislatures control over half of the states and thus have authority over the university systems in those states, if not over their management directly, at least over their budgets. University heads are like every other bureaucrat; if you have them by the budget, their hearts and minds will follow.
A governor or a finance committee chairman calling in a university system head to do a carpet dance would very quickly stop most of this craziness in the Republican states. If the Blue states want to keep on producing mind-numbed lefty robots with “studies” degrees, let them; the world needs more baristas.
If we in the Red states paid half as much attention to who got on school boards and boards of regents as we do to who gets on municipal assemblies or in state houses of representatives, the craziness would end.
Art Chance is a retired Director of Labor Relations for the State of Alaska, formerly of Juneau and now living in Anchorage. He is the author of the book, “Red on Blue, Establishing a Republican Governance,” available at Amazon. He only writes for Must Read Alaska when he’s banned from posting on Facebook. Chance coined the phrase “hermaphrodite Administration” to describe a governor who is both a Republican and a Democrat. This made Democrats irritable and hermaphrodites insulted.
Statue carver and artist, David Rubin’s rendering of the Seward Statue in front of the Capitol.
SEWARD STATUE TO BE UNVEILED: A bronze statue of William Seward will be unveiled in front of the Capitol at 3 pm on Monday. By all reports, the sculpture is being well received because of its artistry, appropriateness, and because the artist didn’t do cosmetic surgery on Seward, who had suffered from a broken jaw and other disfigurations relating to an attempt on his life by a knife-wielding man. More about the project at the Juneau Community Foundation.
CHIEF LEAVES JPD: Juneau Police Department Chief Bryce Johnson has resigned to take a police chief job in Idaho Falls. Deputy Chief Ed Mercer will serve as interim police chief after Johnson’s last day, July 28. Johnson has been chief in Juneau for four years.
NEW CHIEF IN ANCHORAGE: Anchorage Police Chief Chris Tolley announced in April that he’d be leaving in June, and Justin Doll, previously a captain, has been promoted to chief. Tolley had been chief for two years. Doll served in the U.S. Marine Corps for several years before going into police work.
FUN FOURTH WITH DEM-SOCS: Anchorage Democratic Socialists invite Alaskans to a socialist feminist workshop on Sunday, so they can learn about “Socialist feminism is about more than ending sexism – it is also about ending all interconnected systems of oppression that affect different people in different ways. Join Anchorage DSA in presentations and discussions pertaining to how gender, race, and class privilege are tied to issues of oppression and to collectively organize for liberation for all.”
A great way to spend your Fourth of July weekend?
TRANSGENDER DELAY FOR MILITARY: On Friday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis approved a six-month delay in allowing transgender recruits to join the U.S. armed forces. Under President Barack Obama, the Pentagon ended its ban on openly transgender people serving in the U.S. military and was to allow enlistments this year for recruits who had been “stable” in their new gender for 18 months. That has been pushed back to Jan. 1, 2018. The transgender advocacy community protested the action.
CLIMBING DENALI: The summit rate for Mount Denali has been about 36 percent this year, with 359 people making it to the top of America’s highest mountain as of June 30. There are still 179 climbers on the mountain, according to the National Park Service, but the season will quickly wind down as temperatures warm and conditions deteriorate. In a typical season, about 50 percent of climbers are able to summit.
MURKOWSKI TWEETS TO TRUMP: JUST STOP: Sen. Lisa Murkowski usually has a dozen “likes” and a few “retweets” for her run-of-the-mill Twitter feed. But last week one of her messages went viral. It was obviously aimed at the Commander in Chief, and it was shared over 8,300 times by Saturday.
PERATROVICH COIN: The U.S. Mint will put Elizabeth Peratrovich’s likeness on $1 coins, along with designs honoring a 1945 anti-discrimination law that passed the Territorial Legislature, 20 years before the U.S. Civil Rights Act.
The new coin is scheduled for release in 2020. The Mint will be honoring other Native Americans on coins as well. The final design has yet to be settled on, but one side of the coin will continue to feature Sacagawea, who was a guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition.
WALKER ONBOARD FOR ENERGY DOMINANCE: Gov. Bill Walker, three other governors, and tribal leaders discussed energy issues with President Donald Trump last week. The president spoke for several minutes about the importance of Indian Country and helping tribes get access to resources on their own lands. He returned to the topic of energy dominance.
“I applaud President Trump’s vision for the United States to gain global energy dominance. In order to achieve that goal, it’s important that Alaska has full access to its rich reserves of oil and gas,” Walker said.
There’s no indication as to what he says when alone with his Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, who keeps traveling the state and talking about how we need to get used to the end of oil in Alaska.
MOUNT MARATHON: The 90th running of Mount Marathon in Seward on July 4th must go on, although the 2016 winner, David Norris, runner-up Nick Elson, and Alaska Dispatch News political reporter Nat Herz, who is on crutches, will be skipping this year. (No, not skipping up the mountain.)
The group behind a recall election for three Homer City Council members filed a complaint with the Homer City Clerk on Friday afternoon.
Heartbeat of Homer, a group of conservative, civic-minded activists, say that council members Donna Aderhold, Catriona Reynolds, and David Lewis, violated city code when they certified their own election results without declaring a conflict of interest.
The special election was June 13, and all three retained their seats. The city council certified the election on June 19, with the results accepted unanimously. The minutes of the meeting reflect no effort to declare a conflict of interest by the three who were the subject of the recall election. That detail caught the attention of the pro-recall activists.
Through attorney Stacey Stone, Heartbeat of Homer says David Lewis in particular violated code when he seconded council member Tom Stroozas’ motion to certify the results.
The group’s letter cites Homer City Code § 1.18.030(b)(1), “[n]o City Official… shall participate in any official action in which the person is… a party… in the subject of the official action.”
Stone wrote, “As Respondents were all parties to the subject of the official action taken with regard to Resolution 17-064 it was improper for each Respondent not to abstain from voting on such Resolution. Furthermore, it was especially improper for councilmember Lewis to second the motion.”
The group asks that the matter of city council members certifying their own election be forwarded to the Board of Ethics “for consideration of the appropriate sanction, penalty or remedy pursuant to HCC § 2.80.070.”
The Board of Ethics is comprised of all members of the city council and the mayor. The mayor, or the mayor pro tem in the mayor’s absence, serves as presiding officer.
The controversy began this winter when the three city council members worked together to forge a resolution to make Homer a sanctuary city, where illegal immigrants could hide from federal authorities. Ultimately, they watered down their resolution to pledge the city to “inclusivity,” but the original intent of the resolution irritated local conservatives, who felt the city council members were overstepping their authority.
Al Kookesh, a former state senator and current special assistant to Gov. Bill Walker, has been diagnosed with cancer. Members of his family have set up a fundraising page to help him defray expenses related to his treatment.
GoFundMe is a web site that is often used to help families and individuals cope with medical expenses and other emergencies.
According to the page set up for Kookesh, his treatment will start immediately, but no details are available as to the seriousness of his battle with cancer.
Kookesh, from Angoon, represented District C as a Democrat from 2005 through January 2013. Prior to his Senate seat, he was a member of the Alaska House of Representatives from 1997 through 2005, when he lost after redistricting changed the boundaries of his district.
Kookesh received his bachelor’s degree from Alaska Methodist University and law degree from the University of Washington in 1976. He is a commercial fisherman, and owns and operates a lodge and market.
He is on the board of directors of the Sealaska Corporation and is a co-chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives. He also served as acting president and CEO of Kootznoowoo Inc. He is past secretary and grand president of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, and was special assistant to Alaska Governor Tony Knowles. He also served on the central committee of the Alaska Democratic Party.
Kookesh, 68, belongs to the Tlingit Nation, Eagle Tribe, Teikweidí (Brown Bear) Clan, child of L’eeneidí (Dog Salmon) Clan. His Tlingit names are KA ShAAN and YikdehHeiN. He has a Bachelor of Arts in history from Alaska Methodist University and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Washington.
A wide variety of well-known Alaskans, especially Native Alaska leaders, have contributed to the Kookesh GoFundMe site, which likely does not fall under ethics rules in the Office of the Governor since the site was set up by a relative.
As one of the most vocal opponents of REAL ID in the Legislature, he ducked the vote, took an excused absence, and then returned the next morning. When asked by a reporter why he was absent, he sheepishly deflected the question.
